bindfs for web docroot - is this sane?

[Richard Hector <richard@walnut.gen.nz>]

Hi all,

I host a few websites, mostly Wordpress.

I prefer to have the site files (mostly) owned by an owner user, and 
php-fpm runs as a different user, so that it can't write its own code. 
For uploads, those directories are group-writeable.

Then for site developers (who might be contractors to my client) to be 
able to update teh site, they need read/write access to the docroot, but 
I don't want them all logging in using the same account/credentials.

So I've set up bindfs ( https://bindfs.org/ ) with the following fstab 
line (example at this stage):

/srv/wptest-home/doc_root /home/richard/wptest-home/doc_root fuse.bindfs 
--force-user=richard,--force-group=richard,--create-for-user=wptest-home,--create-for-group=wptest-home 
0 0

That means they can see their own 'view' of the docroot under their own 
home directory, and they can create files as needed, which will have the 
correct owner under /srv. I haven't yet looked at what happens with the 
uploaded and cached files which are owned by the php user; hopefully 
that works ok.

This means I don't need to worry about sudo and similar things, or 
chown/chgrp - which in turn means I should be able to offer sftp as an 
alternative to full ssh logins. It can probably even be chrooted.

Does that sound like a sane plan? Are there gotchas I haven't spotted?

Cheers,
Richard